"Either Wright invented Bitcoin, or he’s a
brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did," Andy
Greenberg and Gwern Branwen wrote at Wired.

Australian authorities have denied the raids have anything
to do with the cryptocurrency, of which more than 1 million
Bitcoins are in the possession of its founder. If Wright
truly is Satoshi Nakamoto, that means he's sitting on a $415 million fortune.

“The Australian Federal Police can confirm it has conducted
search warrants to assist the Australian Taxation Office at a
residence in Gordon [a suburb in Sydney’s north] and a business
premises in Ryde, Sydney,” the police told The Telegraph in a statement. “This
matter is unrelated to recent media reporting regarding the
digital currency Bitcoin.”

The raid is apparently due to a tax dispute between the
Australian Tax Office and Wright's former company, Hotwire
Preemptive Intelligence. The company planned to launch a
Bitcoin-based bank but ran out of cash in 2014. On Hotwire's tax
return that year, it claimed $3.4 million in tax credits, which
the ATO is now disputing, BI Australia reported.

"The ATO has disputed the validity of the amounts claimed
and has levied a penalty on Hotwire of $1,716,608.00 in respect
of the lodgement," wrote McGrath Nicol, the administrators
now in charge of Hotwire. "We understand that the Directors
dispute the position adopted by the ATO."

A
pile of Bitcoins are shown here after Software engineer Mike
Caldwell minted them in his shop on April 26, 2013 in Sandy,
Utah. Bitcoin is an experimental digital currency used over the
Internet that is gaining in popularity
worldwideGeorge Frey/Getty
Images

Who is behind the cryptocurrency that has exploded in
popularity since its launch in 2009 has been a source of
investigation among enthusiasts and media outlets alike for quite
some time. Most notably a California man named Dorian Satoshi
Nakamoto was outed as its creatorby Newsweek in 2014, a claim he has
"unconditionally" denied.

According to the Wired report, an anonymous source leaked
documents to Branwen in November, which include a number of blog
posts, emails, transcripts, and accounting forms that corrobate
at least a substantial link between Wright and the creation of
Bitcoin.

In one now-deleted blog posted right before Bitcoin went
live in Jan. 2009, Wright apparently wrote, "The Beta of Bitcoin
is live tomorrow. This is decentralized... We try until it
works."

Interestingly, Wired was not the only publication on the
trail. Gizmodo also received a cache of leaked
documents and published a competing report on Tuesday, which
apparently links Wright and his now-deceased friend Dave Kleiman
to the creation of Bitcoin.

"I hacked Satoshi Naklamoto [sic]," an anonymous emailer
wrote in their first message to Gizmodo. "These files are
all from his business account. The person is Dr Craig
Wright."